A place for librarians to get and share information, ideas and inspiration about serving youth of all ages--and their caregivers. Especially for librarians in west-central Wisconsin's Indianhead Federated Library System.

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Welcome to this latest attempt to connect librarians from west-central Wisconsin with each other! Please send in content (booklists, ideas, photos, etc.), and comment on posts so we can help each other.If you were using feedmyinbox to get new posts sent to you before, you'll need to switch to another service (blogtrottr works like feedmyinbox, googlereader is a good blog-reader to try).

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Friday, February 22, 2013

Here's a grab bag of more great ideas for teens from the Summer Library Program workshop:

Colleen Zertler from Menomonie recruits community members to help with programming, usually for free. Some of her cool programs for teens have included:

Yoga

Zumba

Cake decoration

Blowing things up (with UW Stout professor)

In Baraboo, every single Tuesday the library is open is Teen Tuesday, from 4-6 pm every week. Between 8 and 35 teens participate each week--more if the program is food-related! Having the program every week makes it much easier for teens to remember. There is always something going on at the library for teens on Tuesday. Sometimes teens have to miss during sports seasons, but are always happy to come back once their sport is finished. Parents actually prefer having kids at the library right after school, instead of having to make a special trip back into town after (or during) supper. (I can vouch for that!)

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Penny Johnson from Baraboo was our featured presenter talking about engaging promotions and programs for teens. She had some inspiring things to say to start us off. The 40 Developmental Assets for Adolescents, created and studied by the Search Institute have been used by people who work with teens as a guide for more than a decade. Penny mentioned that a public library with a robust teen program can answer more assets than any other community organization!

Penny created a handout and a Pinterest page, and I'll be following up with some specific ideas she and others shared at the workshop in the coming days. For now, look at this awesome array of promotion ideas:

Fold cootie catchers with information about library programs for teens, and distribute in school lunch rooms, your teen area, and other places teens hang out in your community.

Social media works great for many teens, but keep up your website so their parents can keep track

School visits

Penny brings a flier for the SLP programs and a bag full of props. She brings out a prop, and the first kid that can tell her what it has to do with the summer programs gets a candy bar. It keeps the kids engaged in the presentation!

Colleen from Menomonie spends three days at the middle school doing book talks and Summer Library Program promotion

Ashley from Rice Lake goes to the middle school during lunch hour, brings a monthly flyer, and just walks around the lunch tables, chatting with kids

Marlene from Frederic has found she gets lots of attention when she shows up at the high school in a silly costume.

Georgia from New Richmond sends post cards to kids to remind them of
key events--real mail is less frequent and doesn't get lost in the
onslaught of electronic information

You can send an email that comes as a text, if you have the correct carrier extension--sometimes this takes some extra messing around, but there are lists of extensions out there.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

TThanks to Colleen at Chippewa Falls for reminding me that 2013 is that beloved literalist Amelia Bedelia's 50th Birthday! Her publisher has come up with some suggestions for a party, you can see the resources here. But I bet a lot of you have even better ideas! What are you going to do to celebrate??

If you missed the SLP workshop last week due to scheduling problems, bad weather or illness (all three came into play!), watch this blog in the next few weeks for updates about the program!